Mobvista Inc. announced its financial results for the six months ended June 30, 2019. Revenues were $USD 225.1 million – an increase of 22% over the same period in 2018, when revenues reached $184.5 million. Adjusted net profit grew by 65% to $USD 17.4 million, and adjusted EBITDA grew by 75.8% to $USD 23.0 million.
Programmatic advertising continues to be a key strength of Mobvista, thanks in part to continued investment in technology and infrastructure to offer clients multiple complimentary services. Revenues from programmatic ads reached $USD 126.8 million, accounting for 94.7% of the total revenue growth across the first half of 2019.
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More customers, more inventory, fewer incentives
The number of apps integrating Mobvista’s SDK continued to grow, with 11,000+ apps connected to the ad platform, and 2,440+ app developers partnering with Mobvista. This means that Mobvista continues to be able to offer its customers access to high-quality inventory at scale.
At the same time, there was a reduction in the proportion of the programmatic revenues reinvested as incentives to encourage new customers to use the platform. This declined to 7.5% in the first half of 2019 from 10.3% in the second half of 2018.
Revenues beyond China continue to grow
Whilst China continues to provide the bulk of Mobvista’s revenues, the greatest area of growth was in EMEA, where revenues more than doubled to $USD 34.3 million – 15% of the total. There was also greater diversity in the kinds of apps generating these advertising revenues, with publishers of apps spanning games, utilities, lifestyle, news, social media, video and e-commerce. The strongest performing genre was games, which overtook social and content-based apps to become the biggest earner.
Continued investment in R&D, AI development
Mobvista continued to invest a significant amount in its ongoing R&D efforts, reinvesting $USD 17.1 million in the first half of 2019, or almost eight per cent of the total revenues. Developments in AI and machine learning continue to be a major focus as these technologies are essential to the evolution of programmatic advertising.
In the first half of 2019, Mobvista applied big data computing, large-scale machine learning and elastic cluster management into the development of business, empowering the programmatic advertising services effectively with lower cost. During the six months ended by 30 June 2019, the company’s server costs increased slightly by 1.0% YoY while the programmatic advertising revenue increased by 43.7% YoY.
Mobvista’s strategy continues to be to commercialize these technologies, and this July Mobvista joined Amazon’s Web Services Partner Network (AWS APN) as a way of expanding into new business areas.
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“We have always been focusing on how our technology can best create value across the whole marketing lifecycle of a mobile app,” said Clement Cao, Co-Founder and President of Mobvista. “In the first half of 2019, our programmatic advertising products have remained as the growth engine of the business. At the same time, we continue to develop multiple cloud-based platforms offering machine learning, distributed computing and elastic cluster management. These not only empower our core business offering but also allow us to further expand into new services.”
Summary of Mobvista’s 2019 H1 financial results:
- Programmatic advertising – Programmatic revenues grew by 43.7% to $126.8 million, compared to $88.2 million in the same period in 2018. Programmatic accounted for 94.7% of the overall revenue growth for the first half of 2019.
- Increased reach – Mintegral’s SDK was integrated with over 11,000 apps and the company had partnered with over 2,440 developers by the end of the period.
- A lower percentage of revenues spent on incentives – As a percentage of programmatic advertising revenue, cost from Incentive Plan has been narrowed to 7.5% in the first half of 2019 from 10.3% in the second half of 2018.
- Investment in R&D, AI – R&D investment continued to be a priority, with investment increasing by 39.4% to $17.1 million – up from $12.2 million in the same period in 2018.
- Revenue growth was the greatest outside of China – The greater China region accounted for 58.9% of the total revenues in the first half of 2019, while there was additional growth in the Asia Pacific, EMEA and the American market. The EMEA market saw the biggest growth, with revenues more than doubling to $USD 34.3 million.
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